My Antidote
for Mirela
I remember when I first saw you
on that snowy porch in the Iowan night-shine.
Tree branches were giving themselves freely to the wind
and then my eyelids disappeared.
“I’ll savor you like a sugar cube,” I thought, but
days have a way of pouring in one ear and out the other.
My muddy boots have a way of leaving
muddy tracks on the Bostick House hallway carpet.
Later, I was about to lift up my head
in defeat, when among the riverbank’s pebbles
I found it. A heart-shaped stone in Filiasi
big as your left breast. I carried it across an ocean to Chicago.
Alas, nighttime clouds don’t matter the same way
in the daytime. Each one of us a mousetrap for the other,
a cube of Swiss-cheese for the other,
poison on the tongue that tastes. You are my antidote.
Chicago 2-15-04
Gene Tanta was born in Timisoara, Romania and lived there until 1984, when his family immigrated to the United States. Since then, he has lived in DeKalb, Iowa City, New York, Oaxaca City, Iasi, Milwaukee, and Chicago. He is a poet, visual artist, and translator of contemporary Romanian poetry. His first poetry book is called Unusual Woods (BlazeVOX, 2010). His second poetry book is called Pastoral Emergency and it is forthcoming. [